


Tying You to Me

by notsodarling



Series: birthday appreciation [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Handprint Fic, M/M, Two Idiots Who Love Each Other A Lot, angst with happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:22:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28799778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsodarling/pseuds/notsodarling
Summary: Saving Alex is the most important thing in the world to Michael.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: birthday appreciation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111544
Comments: 18
Kudos: 91





	Tying You to Me

**Author's Note:**

> This year, for my birthday, I opened up my inbox for requests and prompts.
> 
> This was a request from an anon and [dreamthingpdf](https://dreamthingpdf.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.
> 
> Title from "invisible string" by Taylor Swift.
> 
> <3

A loud banging on the hatch door to the bunker startles Michael from his deep concentration working on the calculation in front of him. 

"Guerin! Open up!"

It's Maria's voice.

As easily as breathing, he reaches out with his telekinesis, and unlocks the hatch, listening as it bangs open, but no footsteps descend - it's quiet. Curious as to whatever brought her here to find him and disturb him, Michael drops his pencil on the table, scoffs at the equation, and heads up to the surface.

The sun is just beginning to set, painting the horizon in a sea of yellow, orange, red and purples, but Michael can't focus on that for more than a moment because he catches sight of Maria standing near the open passenger door of her truck, and it's then that Michael realizes someone is with her.

Alex.

Instantly, he is at her side, peering into the cab and finding Alex slumped over, barely conscious, and Michael feels like he can't breath. There's blood - too much of it - covering Alex's face from what looks like some sort of head wound. But that's nothing compared to where someone, probably Maria, has attempted to rip the neck of his shirt to reveal where something - is that a piece of wood - has pierced his chest.

"What happened?" Michael is able to manage, reaching forward needing to just touch Alex, and is relieved when he takes his hand, Alex squeezes it back. It's weak, but it's enough for right now.

"We were at the Pony. It was just the two of us, it's closed today because I was taking my mom-" Maria shakes her head, and curses. "We had just gotten back, had dropped her off at the home, we were sitting at the bar just talking and everything just exploded around us."

It's as she's talking, explaining the events, that Michael notices the cracks in the windows of her truck, the debris scattered in the back. He finally looks over at her, needing a closer inspection, needing to make sure she's okay, and is relieved that besides some obvious cuts and scrapes, she appears to be fine.

He doesn't know what he'd do if he had to worry about both of them.

"Did you call Kyle? I can't-" Not wanting to let go of Alex's hand, he fumbles the other hand into his pants pocket trying to grab his phone. "Max is in California."

But Maria doesn't look like she's listening, her eyes wide, and he just watches as she shakes her head as if not believing something that's happening right in front of her.

"DeLuca? What's wrong."

He's seen that look on her face before too.

"It's not supposed to happen like this," Maria snaps, and Michael can see the tears already making their way down her cheeks, dripping onto her shirt. "Not like this."

She snatches his phone out of his hand, and he hopes she's calling Valenti as she stomps away, banging a fist against the side of her truck - the angriest he thinks he's ever seen her since that day she'd found Rosa in the storeroom of the Pony and discovered the truth about everything.

He focuses back on Alex, dropping his hand and taking Alex's face in his hands instead, trying to not focus on the blood, and the distant look in his eyes. 

"Alex? Alex, I need you to stay with me. I need you-" It's too much, he can't lose Alex. Not now, not when they're just working things out. Not when they're supposed to have the rest of their lives together. He can't believe that this is how it ends, that they wasted their moments.

"Michael," comes the weak reply, immediately followed by a heart-wrenching wet cough, and it shatters the remaining parts of Michael's heart, stealing the rest of the air in his lungs. He's never seen Alex so weak, so close to-

No. He won't even think about that.

Alex takes his hand - the left, the one that for so long had been mangled and weak, a memory of the depths of evil humanity is capable of - and pulls it toward his chest, and Michael shakes his head.

"I can't-"

He stares, wide-eyed in horror at Alex seemingly asking to remove the shard, and Michael knows if he does, it will kill him. Alex will bleed out in front of him, and he'll have to watch him die. He'd already spiraled badly once from someone he cared about dying - or well, someones - he doesn't know how he'd survive losing Alex though.

He kept going after losing his mom because he didn't know what else to do - not after all those things Alex had said - and he knew that he had to stay around for Max and Isobel. And losing Max so soon afterwards nearly broke him. But losing Alex might be the final straw - he'd left a building full of his people,  _ his mother _ , in order to make sure Alex survived. This can't be how it ends.

He watches in silence as blood continues to ooze out from the wound, feeling more helpless than he's felt since he thought they were gonna lose Max even after creating the pacemaker for his heart. 

The tears flow freely down his cheeks as he tries to contain the sob that wants to escape. 

"DeLuca!" 

Almost instantly she's there, hand grasped tightly in his other, the smallest of comforts. He looks over to see she's crying as well, tears streaming down her face, bringing her make-up along with it.

"DeLuca," he tries, barely able to speak. "What did you mean - not like this?"

She doesn't answer, just stares at him, as though expecting him to answer the question himself. And he probably would under normal circumstances, where he wasn't watching Alex disappear in front of him.

Except.

"It doesn't - this isn't-" 

When she nods, despite the tears, it feels as though maybe there is some hope. Maria's visions aren't just prophetic, they've learned - they are actually some form of time travel. He remembers Isobel recounting a conversation with Mimi, where she'd claimed she could see things from the eyes of others in their direct line. If Maria went into the future, and saw Alex,  _ saw him alive _ , then there's hope.

Michael cradles Alex's head in his hands, thumbs rubbing against the ashen skin of his face, but trying to force him to open his eyes and look up.

"Alex," he pleads, leaning forward, pressing their lips together, wondering if he’s imagining that Alex feels colder than normal. "I'm gonna move you. I need to - I'm going to try something."

There's no response from Alex, and Michael can't focus too much on that, he needs to try this. Carefully, he reaches out with his telekinesis, and lowers Alex's body to the gravel, setting him down but never letting go of him, watching his face the entire time, relieved when the tiniest, most pathetic of moans escapes his lips, and Michael finds it comforting only in knowing that Alex is very much alive, and very much still feeling pain.

Michael leans down, pressing their foreheads together roughly, lips brushing together again, and he knows there's blood all over him - he probably looks like a murder scene himself, and hopes no one stops by the junkyard today looking for an oil change.

"I'm gonna try something," he says again between kisses to Alex's lips. "I don't know if it'll work, I don't know what'll happen, but I need you to know - I need to tell you that I love you.  _ I love you _ ."

Using his telekinesis, Michael slowly and carefully extracts the wooden fragment from Alex's chest, tossing it to the side, and immediately placing his hand over Alex's wound, blood seeping out around it, staining his already blood covered hand with even more blood. Closing his eyes, Michael tries to not concentrate on the now, on Alex bleeding out beneath his fingers, but of something better, something happier. He thinks of seventeen, and the beautiful boy he's had a crush on not only stealing his guitar back, but offering Michael a warm place to sleep at night. He thinks of that first kiss at the UFO Emporium, all nerves and want - of how it had felt the first time he'd held Alex's face in his hands. Seventeen and that afternoon in the shed, shedding clothes and sharing kisses, neither of them unable to stop touching the other. Michael thinks of feeling safe, feeling wanted - finally understanding what  _ home _ might feel like. 

The noise in his mind settles, the chaos that often swirls around frantic and uncontrollable, zeroes in on this one point -  _ Alex _ . Michael focuses on that, on their future, on every promise and word they've made to each other recently - Alex wanting to be friends, Alex not actually wanting to end it all, Alex showing up time and time again when he needed him instead of walking away. He thinks of the future he's always wanted for them, lets himself imagine it now, more than he's ever allowed before. Thinks of a home, somewhere he can go to at the end of the day, a place where they have kids and maybe a dog - a dream he’d long buried away. 

It's warm, those thoughts of the future, and Michael stays there for a moment, imagines teaching their son how to play guitar, or showing their daughter how to change the oil in her car. Children with Alex's dark eyes and beautiful radiant smile. 

A hand covers his own, Michael feels it even from where he's deep in his thoughts, and focuses on that feeling for a moment - he knows that hand. That hand, those fingers, have carefully and delicately mapped out every inch of skin on his body over the past decade. He's kissed each fingertip, traced the lines of it's palm with his own fingers, memorized the paths they take.

He opens his eyes, and immediately finds Alex's, and he's alive.

_ He's alive _ .

Michael collapses forward, sobbing into the kiss he immediately presses to Alex's lips, tears back with full force - but this time they're because it worked. 

He glances down at Alex's chest, at where his hand is pressed up against where he knows the wound was, but there's nothing except the left over blood. The skin is healed, good as new and as flawless and beautiful as before. He scrambles to inspect where the wound should be, finding nothing, and falls back into the dirt, feeling as though he can sleep for a month.

Maria drops a bottle of nail polish remover on his lap, and out of the corner of his eye as he chugs the bottle, he watches as she collapses on top of Alex, sobbing her own relief that he’s alive, for some reason blaming herself for what happened.

“There’s nothing you could have done, Maria,” Alex says, pushing himself to sit up. Besides wearing the remains of his own blood, Alex is  _ fine _ . He's all in one piece again and that's all that matters now. "I'm okay."

But as he lowers the bottle, their eyes meet, and Michael doesn't know what's going to happen now. He understands the hypotheticals of healing Alex, about a handprint potentially showing up on his skin, creating the temporary psychic bond. He doesn't mind the idea of Alex feeling his thoughts, his emotions - but he's terrified of finding out what Alex will think of having to experience them this way. And the handprint - Alex still works for the government, he still has regular appointments with a physical therapist and a psychiatrist, and now Michael's gone and added this to the mess?

But he couldn't not save Alex. Consequences be damned, Alex is alive. And that's all that matters to him.

He should apologize to Max too, next time they talk.

"Michael."

Tears in his eyes, Michael doesn't look away from Alex, who's leaning back against the tire of Maria's truck. He's still got blood on his face, and his shirt especially is a lost cause.

And yet he's still the most beautiful person Michael has ever seen.

"I don't know how it works - I've never done that - you might, there might be a handprint and I'm sorry if there is-"

"Michael." Alex's voice is firmer the second time, stopping Michael from continuing. "It doesn't matter."

Behind them, the door to his trailer slams shut, and as he glances around Michael realizes it's Maria. The idea of standing up right now, walking the few feet to the door, and somehow making it to his bed, seems a monumental task at the moment. The bottle of nail polish remover Maria had given him is already empty, and he needs more, feeling the waves of nausea hitting him from expelling so much of his own energy into Alex. 

"How did you do it? I thought only Max could-"

Michael shrugs at Alex's question, because he's not entirely sure. He's assumed they all could potentially have different abilities besides the ones that first manifested as children, but none of them had ever bothered to explore the possibility - even him. 

"It's  _ you _ ," Michael gives by way of reply, because what else is there to say? He wouldn't survive losing Alex, he knows that, he'd long ago accepted that.

He watches, dumbfounded, as Alex spreads his fingers over his chest, placing his hand against the spot where Michael had healed him, exactly where the handprint will shimmer and shine if and when it does appear on his skin. 

"Liz never talked about it," Alex says, lost in his thoughts. "Never told me about what happened with it."

"You'll feel my thoughts. It's a fucking - it creates a psychic connection."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry too. That you'll have to feel all these things-"

Alex doesn't let him finish, just crawls in the dirt over to where he's sitting, and before Michael knows what's happening, Alex's hands are on his cheeks, and their mouths are crashing together, and Michael feels as though he's melting into the touch. He wraps an arm around Alex, their lips never parting, until they fall backwards to the ground, Alex landing on top of him.

"I didn't say it was a bad thing, Michael."

Michael pulls him impossibly closer, trying to forget how close he came to losing Alex, and how now they've got another mystery to solve, and kisses Alex back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


End file.
